It's time to get ready for some exciting new development in downtown Kirkland. Finally! The re-vitalization effort on Lake Street, spear-headed by Stuart McLeod, is a down-sized version of the approved plans from 2007. The new spaces will add 185,000 sf total, which includes 70,000 sf of office space, retail and restaurants on the ground floor and 252 new parking spots in a concealed above ground parking garage (which will be public in the evening-yahoo!). Stuart is a long-time Kirklander, and with the help of Chesmore/Buck Architecture, they have created a well thought out plan which includes a courtyard area and wide sidewalks to keep the look and feel of Kirkland and to encourage foot traffic and community gatherings. "If another developer was doing a project on thissite, they could just place the face of the building 13’ off of the Lake Streetcurb instead of the gracious 33’ width of the courtyard proposed by McLeod. The courtyard will be such a public amenity for year round activities"," said architect Rick Chesmore. Building heights max at 55 feet, which is the current zoned code. You can see from the rendition above how office space gets tiered on top of Milagro and behind Hector's with patios and landscaping. And where there is office space, there are hungry employees to eat in our restaurants and patrons to shop in our stores.
The 5th hearing with the Design Review Board was this week, and they received approval to move forward with their plans. Next they will submit for a permit. The project will likely spend a year in development (permit/bidding process/pre-leasing) and is estimated to take 18-24 months to build. I'm looking forward to this endeavor breathing new life into our downtown. ~j
Yahoooooooo! I'm so excited.
Don't ya just love Stuart!
I wish they could build it faster
Thanks for reporting.
Posted by: Rachel | January 19, 2013 at 11:14 PM
This'll really help downtown -- glad to see it!
Posted by: Woodlands | March 10, 2013 at 08:42 AM